Exploring Self
  The shift is not a thing. It is the action of increasing your self-awareness.

Alan posts:

Kevin, I wrote that without realizing that you had posted at length about friendship on another thread. Someone had pointed me to this thread this morning and I simply noticed the friendly tone of your posts here.

I've noticed certain similarities too, Rob, in certain aspects. In those aspects, borrowing from astrology, I sometimes think of Sumari as a mutable Vold and Vold as a fixed Sumari. Sumari feels dancing and light-footed to me compared to Vold, which often feels to me like driving a loaded Peterbuilt with the accelerator flat on the floor, forget the brakes. Not what you'd call a small turning radius.

[blah blah blah blah blah blah blah]
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain – Butthole Surfers, Pepper

Given that, to me, generalizing, Vold and Sumari alignments feel more similar to each other than the respective belongings do. Vold alignment fleeter of foot.

And Sumafi belonging feels broader to me than Sumafi alignment. As if in the belonging, that's the whole avenue, comfortable and rich and known, and all maneuvering takes place within it. The alignment feels narrow and confining; I catch myself in a way trying to push through and break out of it. But this is just me.

Kevin, in another post I saw you mention Elias saying you are OE of Crowley, and your refer to The Book of the Law. Interesting, I didn't know that Elias claimed to be Aiwass. Though I couldn't make heads or tails out of it by itself, when I read Crowley's annotations a few years ago I thought it was a brilliant foreshadowing of the Shift as Elias describes it, particularly with regard to what he's said about the role of the feminine in the Shift. Lots of correspondences, but I can't remember them now. Doesn't make the Shift real (or not real for that matter - or Elias right for that matter), but the correspondences fascinate me.

Eric has said before that he views consciousness - and essences, focuses, OE, etc. - as a great cosmic soup, and as such doesn't see them as discretely demarcated and definable (pardon me if I paraphrase you inaccurately, Eric ). I like that, and I see them essentially the same way - though I don't think some possible associations of "soup" apply: the homogeneity, the lack of movement and complexity and sharpness and excitement. Given that, I don't take Elias literally when he says that this is one's focus, this is not, this one you observe; or that one has precisely X focuses in this dimension at the time of asking; etc. Nonetheless, I'll ask him about such things, and consider them potential information - I just don't take it literally. Given that, Elias has said that Alan Bennett is a focus of mine; and, that I observe Crowley also, though just for short times (probably when he was high or performing sex magick - Bennett was such an extreme ascetic, had to do something ).

Interesting that you bring this up now. Magic's been getting a lot of my attention lately.

Alan

KevinGrey posts:

Yes, I groked that. There have been a lot of synchronicities that have accompanied me on my arrival. The trumpets sound, the gates swing open. So, I took it in this way.

He didn’t actually. I pointedly asked him if Aiwass was a distortion of Elias, which he confirmed and I haven’t posted my transcript, so unless someone else asked him, it probably isn’t objectively available.

This was my reasoning in mentioning it in my session. I noticed that “Rose” was the channel for the information, as well as a host of other things I associate with the Shift. Not to mention that Elias placed the past time frame for the beginnings of the shift around 1900 in what I’ve read, which tweaked me again considering A.C.’s period of prominence.

Right. Real.

Both in the “eye of the beholder”, in my view. Currently, real to me is what I experience. Due to experiences, in general, “right” is what is. I say “in general” not to suggest instances where this is not the case for me, but simply because in specific “nows”, I don’t see it quite often. The experiences are both “huge” and singular in the context of my life -where I have been aware of the “perfection” of everything for a period of time- as well as mundane and common in the experience of my life -where a “horrific” event at one point is something I view as virtually indispensable to who I am now.

I’m simply not a “focus hunter”. That is to say that while such is vaguely interesting to me, it is only in the context of my fascination with concepts and that this is another avenue for viewing such ideas that incorporate multiple (huge multiples) of aspects, facets, incarnations or whatever word suits one. However, if a “focus” seems to have a deep connection with my current experience, I will seek to understand more about the why and what influences this represents for me. I had a deep fascination with Crowley for a time, which prompted my questions regarding him and in actuality, I think Elias said “partially” observing now that I think about it. Though in my lack of focus on focuses (hehe), I don’t pay much attention myself except in the “what does it mean to me now?” sort of fashion.

The only other such references were a counterpart with Jung (again, a fascination of mine for a time) and most importantly, another focus of mine who is a serial killer in Western Europe a bit earlier in time, from my perception, than Jack the Ripper. I say most importantly as we’ve been playing together since I was a child. We converse in my dreams and I draw an intensity of energy from him which I use towards accepting myself. He is very accepting of himself and views himself as an artist. Knives and young women. Brush and canvas. Pen and paper.

Beyond this, I have no real awareness of connections to any other focuses and I do not seek them, though I welcome them if they come.

In this, I guess I’m cool with an “it matters not” approach to words like “Shift”, “focuses”, “observing” etc. This probably from the influences of my tendency to “de-focus” when presented with “details” and my resultant intuitive grasp (Or "groking". "Yes, that’s it exactly, that’s what I feel") of such things as Aldous Huxley’s statement that:

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

And Korzybski’s General Semantics wherein our abstractions prove convenient for exchange of concepts but should not be assumed to have further significance. “The map is not the territory.”

Thanks to my experience in my twenties and confirmation in such objective validations and further experiences, I was already fully at this point before coming to the Elias information. As a matter of fact, even as far back as my childhood my empathic intuitions were informing me that people were often unable to express themselves accurately, not because they were inherently deceptive, but simply because what they wanted to express was too big for the language they had. In addition, I always felt at a loss for words to encompass my expression as well and I was often frustrated as a child in not being able to say what I felt. Which means that I expanded my vocabulary enormously in attempting to reconcile this before realizing that there were other avenues available to me, or that I was already using them quite often.

For quite a while I was fascinated with the concept. I digested everything I could get my hands on in regards to Magick. For myself, long before objectively interacting with the Elias material, I came to a few conclusions on it. Each system represents a methodology for self-realization and self-discovery, to me. Taken as a whole, that is a survey of all esotericism from the current limits of our “recorded history”, it represents a continued awareness of ourselves as “more” and our ability to create our reality.

In “psychological” terms, I see that for me, esotericism represents what you mentioned earlier as the “role of the feminine”. In the historical context of a predomination of male-centric exoteric (outer religious) practice, esoteric then is simply the “anima” of our entire historical existence, to now. Which is why I feel it is most often associated with the “Feminine Principle”. Sophia, Isis, Venus, Mary. Because of the way that knowledge is perpetuated in the “female memory” for lack of any better term, it provides an unbroken line that stretches from this time frame (in my perception) all the way back to the “beginning”, as it were.

In the same way that a new pride leader, among lions, will kill all of the cubs of the previous leader, a new direction in exoteric practice will seek to stamp out any remnant of previous modes of thought held dominant by predecessors. Meaning that the only “unbroken” line of “genetic memory” comes from the lioness.

I wish to pause here to mention the “truth” of such ideas. Or what I like to refer to as symbol over substance. For it matters not if “evolution”, “genetics” and other such is a truth, as we view such for the “real” of it is in my experience of it. For such are conceptual symbols (much like a language) which allows me to “read” the abstractions of other conceptual symbols in the context created by the “language”. To me, this is magick.

Realization that “groking” the symbols allows one to manipulate the symbols and through deep associations to other symbols (in one's beliefs or "guidelines"), affect things “at a distance” in physics parlance. If I discover a symbol, which in my perception influenced by my beliefs, is “entangled” with another, then I can alter the “spin” and “momentum” of the one symbol (or particle) in order to affect the other, regardless of the time/space that “appears” to separate them. To me, this is magick.

In this, the abstractions are what is relevant to me. Not the medium in which the symbols are expressed.

In any event, where the male-centric, exoteric influence is always seeking change, the feminine or esoteric is concerned with stability and continuity. Water that finds it’s course through rock to reconnect the chain from the tiniest droplet in the upper atmosphere to one at the bottom of the deepest ocean as opposed to the fire that will alter the landscape in an instant.

And when the men came to burn the books of previous thought and religion to make way for the new, the Keepers knew that explaining the “self-realization” contained therein would not preserve it. It would be labeled as “subversive” to the New Order and destroyed. Thus, they instead provoked dreams of Immortality, Power, Wealth, ensuring that even those who viewed the material as subversive would preserve it “just in case” and even pass it on to others. Their progeny and friends.

In fact, such “dreams” were exactly what was preserved in the information. That is, the symbolic knowledge of our own Immortality, Power, Wealth.

Through the manipulation of these symbols, they defied Time, Change and were able to maintain an unbroken continuity of awareness. To me, this is magick.

It is also why the particular symbolism of my essence families are so interesting to me. For Sumafi to me is the“Keepers of Knowledge” and continuity, least distortion, etc. Whereas Vold is the fiery change that burns and clears to make way for the new.

Anyway, a fun exploration. I’m interested in what you find magick to be for you. If you choose to continue such explorations. Or what you feel it is now.

Peace.

ELIAS: “Now, in this moment, I can create what I want, for I am aware of what influences me and I am aware that I incorporate choices. It is not black and white. I am not hidden from myself. I am also acknowledging of myself and my guidelines, for they are what allow me to create what I want - not that I discount myself in incorporating these guidelines, not that they are bad.”